randomjames

My main complicated drawings are taking ages so I thought I would work on a few easier ones at the same time. This is the first to be finished.
For me Gulf Racing is the most iconic colour scheme in motor racing and I’ve been meaning to do a 917 but never got around to it until now. Unsurprisingly there aren’t a whole lot of overhead shots of it so this was based on photos of the 1:8 scale die cast model by Amalgam Collection. Very high end, about £10k but bespoke can apparently cost up to £120k. Not something to let the kids play with. 
On the Porsche 917K’s public debut at the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours, John Wyer's Gulf-sponsored team finished 1-2 in the race. The winning number 2 car driven by Pedro Rodríguez, Leo Kinnunen and Brian Redman broke the distance record by 190 miles.

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

Nicely done.
 

If this is useful for anyone, here's my rendering of the new app icons in .afdesign format. 
Affinity 2 Icons.afdesign

If this is useful for anyone, here's my rendering of the new app icons in .afdesign format. 
Affinity 2 Icons.afdesign

After Adobe went to subscription-only, I coasted on CS6 for a while and then switched to Affinity, and have never looked back. OK, well, I do fire up Photoshop every now and again for one reason or another, but overall I've been delighted with the Affinity products, and the value proposition they offer.
Market-wise, Serif's products lie in the middle of the huge gulf between expensive, rigid Adobe, and free, freewheeling open-source alternatives (GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus...). With respect to communication with users, I find myself wishing that Serif would lean more toward the behavior of open-source products.
Serif's communication is hit-or-miss. The v1 Beta programs did a good job giving users an insight into short-term plans for features and bug fixes. But this was all users could see in the way of a product roadmap. And the long gap between v1 and v2 with no public Beta left users in the dark for a very long time. For the most part, we were left guessing. Just the fact that there was a thread entitled "Is Affinity dead?" exemplifies that situation.
In the forums, Serif staff are very responsive to questions about bugs, existing features, and product behavior, which is absolutely wonderful.
On the other hand, my perception is that questions about Serif's short- or long-term plans, or even in some cases questions about existing policies, are greeted with a frustrating silence. 
Recent examples include the v1=>v2 upgrade pricing kerfuffles (there are two of them: one for longstanding v1 users, and one for recent v1 purchasers), the Windows msix installation debacle, and the aforementioned radio silence after 1.10.5.
Some of this secrecy might be justifiable (if somewhat cynically) for business reasons. For example, prospective first-time customers looking to buy Affinity v1 this past July might've been discouraged if they knew that v2 would be released in November, but they would have to pay the going rate for the upgrade. Or, if they learned that their hoped-for feature would not be implemented. So they might have chosen to hold off, impacting the timing and amount of revenue to Serif. 
However, for the most part, I am having trouble understanding the rationale for much of the secrecy. Seeing a product roadmap can be an incentive to buy into a product at an early stage. Maybe someone doesn't want to purchase Designer because they're not sure if there'll ever be a bitmap trace feature. If they see it on the roadmap, perhaps they'll take the plunge now, to start their transition. 
And most of us understand that there will be uncertainty. Even without a definitive answer, a response is superior to silence.
It's fine for Serif to say, "This is the fairly firm roadmap for v2.2 through v2.3, the tentative roadmap for 2.4-2.8, and the speculative feature set for v3. Any of this is still liable to change. Feedback welcome."
It would have been fine for Serif to say on the day after the v2 announcement, "We understand that some users have an issue with the MSIX installation. We're going to be discussing it among ourselves to determine what, if anything we will do in response. Stay tuned." It obviously would have been even better if the plans to use MSIX had been divulged months before announcement, since it would have better prepared Serif for release.
Posts like Ash's, which explain details surrounding the pricing and upgrade decisions, are fantastic, but IMO they could've been published MUCH earlier.
Most of the people who follow the forums, myself included, are committed Affinity users and supporters. We're going to be upgrading to v2, and we're very likely to pay again for v3. So I'm just not clear on what Serif gains by being so reticent to tell us what's going on, and what the plans are for the future.

Thanks for having a keyboard shortcut system within you applications.
To enhance its functionality I request to add keyboard shortcuts for Opacity, Flow and Hardness brush settings.
Reason:
Working with shortcuts is faster and more fluid than moving the mouse or pen to the UI tool bars.
As Opacity, Flow and Hardness are frequently used settings while painting, the missing keyboard shortcuts are disturbing the workflow.
Furthermore:
In my case I switched from keyboard use to a remote controller. This allows me to map the shortcuts from Affinity to physical nobs and wheels on the controller. This makes working in the Applications more comfortable for me. Unfortunately I can't add the mentioned brush settings, which causes the controller workflow to be disturbed like the keyboard workflow.
 

They could make the icons on the top as a carousel, so that you can scroll through the icons. They could even make the list customisable, so you could choose your most used formats and arrange them according to your needs.

Well, the V1 Export window on Retina display has a size of 1308x838px and the V2 Export window is 1722x1296px by default (can be resized to be even larger).
I am quite sure that there is enough room for V1 style. There are 11 presets in V1 and 13 in V2 at the moment (where JPEG XL can easily be put together with JPEG).
So if you enlarge this Export window to let's say 1800x1300px there will be plenty of room for preset at the top AND it would create enough space on the left side for Preview - as I tried to mock up above. 
Here is another attempt - I've expanded the window little bit and I was able to fit 14 presets to the top. 
 
 

Instead of bitching about it, let's see how the Export window could've been done. This is just something I came up in few minutes. I'm quite sure you guys will come up with something much much better. I'll give it some time later on, too!
Ideas for different UI elements are also welcomed!
This is by no means to make fun of Serif's UI experts, just to give them some ideas for parts of UI that could've been done better.
Thanks in advance for your input!
 
 
 

For the thumbnails:

I just wanted to share this. 
I love that AD v2 on iPad now has these thin black lines to divide things in the layers studio. You can see how in v1 theres no division in the layers. Everything is together on a dark gray colored background layer.  In v2, those thin black lines add contrast and separation. You can tell where things are now. It was very much needed. I have an issue though. My first issue is when performing a group action. 
I have a pink and blue square here in my layers that I’ve grouped together in v1 and v2 in the photo below. In v1, when they’re grouped, the thumbnail of the layer shows my pink and blue square grouped. I like that a lot because my layer thumbnail is showing me what I have on that layer thats now grouped. However, in v2, when they’re grouped, my thumbnail layer is a folder icon. I don’t like that because I don’t know whats in that layer. Its not showing me whats in my layer. Its just showing a big folder icon. I have to collapse that layer to see whats inside my group layer. So this is an issue because 1, I don’t know whats in my layer. I’d prefer v1s thumbnail because it shows me a thumbnail of my layer when its grouped and everything inside it. 2, that folder icon should not be there. That folder icon should have been to the far left side of my layer to tell me what type my layer is since that new feature was introduce that tells you what type of layer your layer is through these new icons.
So my layer in v2 should be displaying a thumbnail of what inside my layer(pink and blue square) and this folder icon should be to the far left to indicate this layer is a “group” layer type. Thats my first issue. Look at example 1 for reference of how it should be in the photo below.
My second issue is I don’t like that the collapse icons and these new layer type icons are on top of each other in this one tiny box. I think that goes against adding these thin black lines to show contrast and division. I think these 2 icons should be separated and be in their own little box because you got 2 icons in this very tiny, tiny little box.  I have to look at both icons in the same box and do some extra thinking. I just think that they should be separated. Look at example 2 for reference.
I don’t know if we can follow this new "layer formula" below for our layers.
Collapse Icon ~ Layer type ~ Thumbnail ~ Layer Name ~ FX ~ Lock Icon ~ Visibility ~ Tags
Also, can we add those thin black lines for the lock and FX icons in the layers. They are just way too close to each other and need some separation. There needs to be more spacing between these icons. Look at the photo below for reference. 

With all due respect, but your position and arguments are ridiculous. Every software upgrade offered by a commercial company comes with a price. You can now purchase the app(s) at a 40% discount and that's quite generous.

Gotta say that the first thing I noticed about the new Publisher UI was the appearance of the export panel.
Why were the highly user friendly format colours and icons removed in favour of a tiny select box? This seems like a bizarre adjustment.

They tweeted a reply to me about the export panel and they're working on it and they will push an update to it later.

It is not that we want to have the same as in V1!!! We don´t want this what we get in V2. If the space should be a problem in future it sholud be spend time to find an idea to make it better and not even worser. An icon with a color to find an entry fast is not a joke. It is a way to improve productivity, a big text list where we have to read each entry to find the right is not good. And again: it is a software for designers, we make it the whole day and find in our work/art/sparetime/hobby this kind of stuff... we make icons, art and find ideas how to bring it good to screen and paper... it is not a text editor  So i assume that the devs find solutions to make it better and go not 10 steps back
Also the enhanced settings should be hidden in the export window. It makes sense if it is enhanced and not needed for every export situation, and disabling the preview is a must for me  Much, much room for improvements...
 
Either way: i am happy to pay the update (Spent 170 euros yesterday  ). 

@randomjames I was explaining the reason why the svg to Figma will become 1px from Affinity Designer. The reason is that the Affinity Designer did not give SVG Width and Height in px.
I also hope that serif can solve this problem.
 

@randomjames: Same here. No need for an oldscool dropdown text menu. I also don´t like the preview. 
 @carl123: it is not all about the actual speed, it is the perceived speed which slows down the work. I need time to search the entry in the list, next my eyes are blocked for a short while in the preview.. 
I think we never wolud discuss as much about UI here in the forum if the software would not be a design software  But i would assume that a design software also uses some guidlines and make it better than this here. For me who make designs the whole day and look at small pixel errors and colors it is a no go to go so much steps back.
 

I hate it too. Please return the old export window. And remove the preview, in complex files it blocks the machine.

Nice job on Affinity 2.0.  I already purchased all apps.
FEATURE REQUEST: It would be nice to see a type of VECTOR ERASER in Affinity Designer 2 that would allow us to quickly erase INTERSECTING LINES.  This can dramatically increase productivity with illustrations. 
See attached video.
 
Thanks!!!  I am enjoying 2.0 !!!

vector eraser demo.mp4

The old menu had 11 items, the new select box has 13.
It's not a space issue. The new menu is actually over 30% wider than the one in version 1. See my attached image for quick mock up of how the old style icons could look in the new menu.
The new dropdown reduces usability dramatically, by forcing the user to read through a list of tiny names, all in the same colour. Before, my brain associated PDF with the red icon. Now I've got hunt for it. This is bad UI.

Gotta say that the first thing I noticed about the new Publisher UI was the appearance of the export panel.
Why were the highly user friendly format colours and icons removed in favour of a tiny select box? This seems like a bizarre adjustment.

Go to Preferences>General and tick "Copy object as SVG" (Not sure about the exact term, I am using Afinity in French ;) )
If you copy paste from Affinity to Figma you will get your object in vector.

 

I am also experiencing leading issues in Designer.

Anyway…
Another day, another workaround: 

apu_span_workaround4a.mp4   The trick:

apu_span_workaround4b.mp4   The example doc: apu_span_workaround4.afpub.zip
To me it seemed that the benefit of using pinned text frames as "spacers" is that you can create them relatively easily by using the headline paragraph style, and thus align quite quickly, even without using baseline grid alignment.
But technically it can be any object of any size. The text wrap remains intact even when they're hidden (uh… is it a "feature" or a bug?) so it doesn't really matter.
What also helps if you have matching leading values, like base text grid 12 pt, headline leading 48 pt etc.
If that's not possible, you may need to align the base text to baseline grid.
Also be aware that there are some bugs in Text Frame > Vertical Position, and > Baseline Grid settings. It still doesn't behave as one would expect from the values you enter.